Widdershins eBook

They’ve brought me here for a holiday, and I’m
to go back to the studio in two or three days.
But they’ve said that before, and I think it’s
caddish of fellows not to keep their word—­and
not to return a valuable diary too! But there
isn’t a peephole in my room, as there is in some
of them (the Emperor of Brazil told me that); and
Benlian knows I haven’t forsaken him, for they
take me a message every day to the studio, and Benlian
always answers that it’s “all right,
and I’m to stay where I am for a bit.”
So as long as he knows, I don’t mind so much.
But it is a bit rotten hanging on here, especially
when the doctors themselves admit how reasonable it
all is.... Still, if Benlian says it’s “All
right ...”

IO

As the young man put his hand to the uppermost of
the four brass bell-knobs to the right of the fanlighted
door he paused, withdrew the hand again, and then
pulled at the lowest knob. The sawing of bell-wire
answered him, and he waited for a moment, uncertain
whether the bell had rung, before pulling again.
Then there came from the basement a single cracked
stroke; the head of a maid appeared in the whitewashed
area below; and the head was withdrawn as apparently
the maid recognised him. Steps were heard along
the hall; the door was opened; and the maid stood
aside to let him enter, the apron with which she had
slipped the latch still crumpled in her greasy hand.

“Sorry, Daisy,” the young man apologised,
“but I didn’t want to bring her down all
those stairs. How is she? Has she been out
to-day?”

The maid replied that the person spoken of had been
out; and the young man walked along the wide carpeted
passage.

It was cumbered like an antique-shop with alabaster
busts on pedestals, dusty palms in faience vases,
and trophies of spears and shields and assegais.
At the foot of the stairs was a rustling portiere of
strung beads, and beyond it the carpet was continued
up the broad, easy flight, secured at each step by
a brass rod. Where the stairs made a turn, the
fading light of the December afternoon, made still
dimmer by a window of decalcomanied glass, shone on
a cloudy green aquarium with sallow goldfish, a number
of cacti on a shabby console table, and a large and
dirty white sheepskin rug. Passing along a short
landing, the young man began the ascent of the second
flight. This also was carpeted, but with a carpet
that had done duty in some dining- or bed-room before
being cut up into strips of the width of the narrow
space between the wall and the handrail. Then,
as he still mounted, the young man’s feet sounded
loud on oilcloth; and when he finally paused and knocked
at a door it was on a small landing of naked boards
beneath the cold gleam of the skylight above the well
of the stairs.

“Come in,” a girl’s voice called.

The room he entered had a low sagging ceiling on which
shone a low glow of firelight, making colder still
the patch of eastern sky beyond the roofs and the
cowls and hoods of chimneys framed by the square of
the single window. The glow on the ceiling was
reflected dully in the old dark mirror over the mantelpiece.
An open door in the farther corner, hampered with
skirts and blouses, allowed a glimpse of the girl’s
bedroom.